Privacy Statement
This Privacy Statement applies to Barney Financial Group Inc and its affiliated organizations.
Collection
Barney Financial Group collects personal information from different sources depending on the services that we are providing or whether we are collecting this personal information for our internal business operations. For example, we may collect personal information directly from you when you retain us or your employer when your employer retains us. We may also collect personal information from other Barney Financial Group member firms that we are assisting. We may also collect personal information through third parties who perform background checks and credit checks for us. In addition we may collect personal information through third party analytics and advertising firms who assist us in our marketing. These firms may provide us with data about your online activities on other sites where we show our advertising and marketing material.
We collect the following types of personal information:
Contact information, such as your name, title, role, employer, telephone, email address, and mailing address.
Visitor information when you attend at our offices or events, such as your name, company, and person you visited at our offices and events
Mandate information, such as information about the services you have requested or the matters that you are involved in
Services information, such as information that you provide or that we generate as part of our services. This information may include: financial, spousal and dependent, beneficiary, residency and other information relevant to providing tax, estate planning, and business planning, tax-related information when we are providing tax or financial advisory services; employee information, including salaries and benefits, when we are conducting restructuring services and management advisory services; customer and vendor information when we are conducting an audit or assisting with information technology implementation
Public profiles, such as information that you have made public such as on LinkedIn or your company's website
Communications, such as the content of your emails, voicemails, and other communications with us
Communication preferences and interests, such as when you subscribe to receive our newsletters, updates, or other materials
Feedback, such as when you fill out client surveys or feedback forms at our events
Recruitment information, such as CVs, references, and other information you may provide if you apply for employment or an internship, or that we collect as part of our recruitment activities
Background check information, such as credit checks, criminal records checks, economic and other sanctions checks, credential checks and other background information
Portal registration information, such as email address, password and activities using our client portal
Device and browser information when you use our website www.barneyfinancialgroup.ca, a Barney Financial Group microsite (such as our client portal) or mobile apps, such as your IP address, browser type and version, time zone setting, operating system, device type, hardware model, MAC address, and network information
Browsing information when you use our website www.barneyfinancialgroup.ca Barney Financial Group microsite or mobile app, such as URL clickstream data about your visit to, through and from our website, page response times, downloads, length of visits and interaction information
Marketing interaction information, such as whether you opened one of our electronic newsletters or clicked on an advertisement or otherwise interacted with our marketing materials
Use
We may share personal information in order to perform services for our client, to fulfill legal requirements or to operate, market and improve our business. The following are examples of who we may share personal information with:
Service providers, who provide outsourced business services to us, who assist us in marketing and advertising or events, or who assist us in providing or managing our information technology and communications systems
Screening service providers, who perform credit checks, sanctions screening, crime or anti-money laundering checks, and other background checks
Clients, as part of work product, such as when we are retained to conduct an audit or investigation or prepare a report or advice, and your personal information is relevant to that work product
Analytics providers and advertising networks, who support our analysis of the performance of our website, microsites and mobile apps and your interests, or who assist us in placing advertising on other sites,
Emergency responders, emergency contacts, or public health authorities, when necessary to respond to an emergency, or address an urgent occupational health and safety issue or outbreak of communicable diseases
Law enforcement bodies and regulators, when required under applicable laws, such as anti-money laundering reports, or where we are reporting a contravention of laws
Other third parties, in the course of a commercial transaction involving the acquisition of or transfer of any part of our business
Consent and other legal bases
There may be several reasons why we might collect, use, share or otherwise handle your personal information. These include:
With your explicit or implicit consent, such as when you provide the personal information as part of a request for services or a product, when you provide the personal information for a specific purpose or we ask you to consent to our use of your personal information for a purpose or for the purposes set out in this Privacy Statement
With the consent of someone with authority to provide the information to us, such as your employer or a third party who you provided the information and who has the legal right to share it with us
Where is necessary to fulfill our legal obligations, such as where we need to conduct client screening, anti-money laundering checks, or for other legal and compliance purposes where the law permits us to handle personal information with your consent
For the purposes of responding to legal claims against us
To conduct investigations where the law permits us to handle personal information without your consent
We may use your business contact information to contact you in your business, role, function, or occupation without your consent. If we send you commercial electronic messages, we will comply with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, subject to any exceptions permitting us to send unsolicited commercial electronic messages. You may unsubscribe from our communications at any time.
Security
We use physical, technical, and organizational security measures that are consistent with standards in the accountancy and professional services industry. These security measures are designed to protect the confidentiality and integrity of personal information in our custody. We use contractual or other means to require our service providers to protect the confidentiality and integrity of personal information we entrust to them. Unfortunately, no system of security measures can guarantee the security and privacy of personal information. If you are sharing highly sensitive information electronically with Barney Financial Group, please speak with us about methods of secure file transfers.
Location and Retention
Personal information is stored primarily in Canada. However, we may also use service providers in the United States and around the world, except where we are restricted by legal or contractual requirements. The laws of other jurisdictions may not be as protective as those in Canada and personal information held outside of Canada may be subject to disclosure to the governments, courts or law enforcement or regulatory agencies of these other countries in accordance with their laws.
We retain information for the purposes for as long as it is necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it. We also retain personal information to meet obligations under applicable laws and regulatory requirements and to maintain records for possible litigation or investigations. Our retention period will vary depending on the nature of the information that is held. For example, we may retain information about you for as long as you are a client. We may retain matter specific information for as long as the applicable limitation period for claims, which may be 15 years or in some jurisdictions longer. In addition, copies of personal data stored in our electronic backups may be retained until they are destroyed in accordance with the ordinary lifecycle of our backups.
Children and minors
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children or other persons who are under 14 years of age except as part of a client engagement (e.g. the preparation of tax returns, estate planning, and other legitimate reasons). Our website and marketing materials are only for use by individuals who have reached the age of majority in their province or country of residence.
Cookies
Please see our Cookies Policy for information on how we use website cookies on our website www.barneyfinancialgroup.ca.Please also see cookie notices or similar notices for any Barney Financial Group microsites or mobile apps that you may use.
Your Rights
Canadian privacy laws provide you with certain rights. Please see “How to contact us” for the contact information of our Privacy Office in order to exercise these rights.
Access rights – you have the right to ask us if we have collected information about you and to obtain access to that information. If you wish to exercise this right, please send a written request to our Privacy Officer. We will ask you for information to confirm your identity and may ask you to assist us in describing your relationship with us so that we can locate the relevant personal information. Please note that we may withhold disclosure of personal information in certain cases under applicable laws.
Correction – you have the right to ask us to correct any incomplete or inaccurate personal information we hold about you. If we disagree with your correction request, we will insert a note in our files explaining the basis of our refusal to correct the information. We recommend that you raise any issue with incorrect, incomplete, or inaccurate personal information with the Barney Financial Group personnel who are assisting you. However, you may also make a request to the Privacy Officer.
Withdraw consent – you have the right to ask us to cease collecting, using, or sharing our personal information in some cases. We will do so if we have no further purpose for handling your personal information. You can unsubscribe from any of our electronic marketing communications using the unsubscribe links provided. You may communicate other requests to withdraw consent from the Barney Financial Group personnel who are assisting you or you may make a request to the Privacy Officer.
Complaints – you have the right to make a complaint to our Privacy Officer about our compliance with this Privacy Statement or applicable privacy laws. We encourage you to raise your concern with the Barney Financial Group personnel who are assisting you. However, if you make your complaint to the Privacy Office, we will investigate the matter and report to you about the investigation findings.
Changes
We may change this Privacy Statement from time to time. Please refer to the date at the bottom of this Privacy Statement for the last date. If there is an important change to our privacy practices, we will highlight the changes in this section
How to contact us
To exercise your rights or to make a complaint, please contact:
Privacy Officer, Barney Financial Group
849A James Street,
Woodstock, ON N4S 1S2 Canada
Tel/Tél.: (519) 783-1515 or privacy@barneyfinancialgroup.ca
Reviewed December 10, 2024